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By Cynthia Fleury

July 13, 2005

l'Humanite - Original Article (French)    

The American tour has started up again. This time in Asia, with China, South Korea and Japan, and Condoleezza Rice is determined to deal with the issue of North Korea's nuclear capabilities. Derek Mitchell, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said "the United States' impatience is more and more visibly palpable." The "cup runneth over" and it is time for Pyongyang to finally sit down at the negotiating table again (source AFP). By threatening to pursue a policy of hostility, America intends to obtain peace – on its own terms.

It's a fact that since the attacks in 2001, flexibility in Washington doesn't exist. After the terrorist catastrophe there was no "return to normal," and for Ghassam Salamé (1), this lack of return to normality is problematic for the world's biggest power. Since it suffered the terrorist earthquake, America has imposed its national preferences on others through globalization. It has embarked on a neo-imperial project with unprecedented military resources. In 2004, the [U.S.] military budget reached nearly $416 billion, 6.5 times that of Russia ($65 billion) or nine times that of France. And the risk of a split with Europe is being cemented.

In fact, it's less a split than a "repudiation": "In the same way," Ghassam writes, "that one might repudiate his mistress without prior notice, Robert Kagan … announced his desire to break off with a rather spineless Europe." The verdict has been handed down: "Because you persist with your pacifist illusions (which you couldn't even think of if I weren't here to protect you), I am forced to observe that our visions of the world are too far apart for us to continue living together." Sniff …

As John Ikenberry said, American neoconservatives have become theoreticians of "hegemonic stability," totally "obsessed by the material sources of power." There is thus no place for "the role of ideas, standards and institutions," which could create unnecessary doubt. It is time for totally reexamined relationships of force, even within the country [the United States]: the "President" prevails over the "deliberating organs," the military over "the other instruments of influence," and the Pentagon over "the other government departments."

Like the world, American democracy is suffering.

Does this mean that "the enfant terrible of the 21st century will be America – as it was the USSR in the 20th?" For Moses Naim, editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine, the United States has adopted traits of what are known as rogue states." The prototype of the "post-cultivated society," of the "post-draft army" and the "post-industrial economy," it needs a "corrective vision."

But the Americans are not solely responsible for their malady. For Ghassam Salamé and Moses Naïm, the American malady is the result of a "toxic combination" of circumstances and a "permissive environment," in which the following have come together: "compliant secret services," Democrats afraid to look like traitors, "Republicans who follow blindly," not to mention "servile diplomats," "complicit journalists" and "docile foreigners!" It's hardly surprising that the century has become perniciously "Wilsonian" and that the United States reigns alone over the common domains of airspace, sea and digital technology. In fact, if Rosen is to be believed, "NATO, ANZUS and the treaty with Japan are not alliances between equals but security guarantees granted by the imperial power to its subordinates." The allies have become "clients" who buy their collective security from the United States.

[Editor's Notes: ANZUS is a security pact between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, signed in 1951. The attribution to "Rosen" in the previous paragraph is incomplete].

In the middle of this unpalatable diagnosis, a more utopian voice is making itself heard. University professor Charles Kupchan is fighting for a hybrid political entity, the "Atlantic Union." Envisioning the worst – that is to say, imagining the end of the West – he defends the idea of a merger of the European Union with NATO into a single organization. In other words, to save the West from its internal clash, it is better to unite the two blocs, American and European, into a common logic that is resolutely Atlantic (and not Atlanticist).

Someone needs to mention this to the members of the European Council. It would be stupid for them not to think about this hypothesis.

(1) Ghassam Salamé, Quand l'Amérique refait le monde [When America Remakes the World], Fayard, 2005.